A Swiftly changing conspiracy theory

I bet you can't tell just by reading my column but I'm not much of an athlete, if by "athlete" you mean someone who is gifted with skill, strength, endurance or sometimes even the most rudimentary idea of how this game — or that one — is played. I'm bookish and snarky, not the sort that fights it out on a court. But for one glorious season, I was a football phenom. I was in sixth grade then, but I'd already grown into most of my adult height, standing about as tall as my male teacher and over nearly every boy in my class. Our teacher, the only man of the three sixth-grade teachers, would say "Who's playing ball?" and almost every boy in all three classes, plus a handful of the toughest girls, would run over to the field behind the elementary school. It was flag football, of course, but it was still rough and tumble. I learned all the rules of the game that year, and I loved my teacher for including me and never once telling us girls didn't belong there. I learned I was great on defense, known for taking out the quarterback even if it did ring my bell. This did not lead to a lifelong love of football for me, but I've been thinking a lot about the sport, and more specifically the zeal of its fans this week with all this Super Bowl talk. This is the first year in my life I've ever heard of the Pentagon getting involved. Sigh. It's just that kind of year, I guess, but it's getting so tiring living in a country where rumormongering is so off the hook that real institutions, things we always thought of as serious, weighty things with some gravitas involved, have to step up to respond to some "news" organizations. Again, I don't follow football. This year it got a little more exciting for a hot minute when we thought the Browns might have a chance. Even I would have watched that, but that's just native-born madness. But this year it's all about a single couple. A massively popular celebrity pop star and her handsome boyfriend, who happens to be playing in the game. See, at this point if I don't mention their names and I just describe them like that it could be the description of a movie you'd watch on Netflix. But it's real, and here's the plot twist I bet you wouldn't see coming if this were a Hallmark flick: It's being spun as a conspiracy plot so much that the Department of Defense had to issue a statement denying it. Here's what happened. Here you have Taylor Swift, a young, blond musical wunderkind who's topped charts for 17 years writing her own songs, winning hundreds of awards and smashing records. A billionaire with a reputation for good business sense and giving back millions to charity, she fell for a football player. His name is Travis Kelce, the tight end for the Kansas City Chiefs, whose appearance in the Super Bowl isn't really a surprise. This is the team's fourth time there in the past five years. He's won it twice. How did these two celebrities become conspiracy plot fodder worthy of Pentagon attention? Sigh. It's the times, man. What can I tell you? Swift, who started her career as a country singer before switching genres to pop and conquers anything she likes, had remained mostly politically silent until 2018, when she spoke up about congressional races in her home state of Tennessee, against the Republican candidate. In 2020, she spoke against then-President Donald Trump and said she was voting for Joe Biden, hoping that the nation could "start the healing process." Kelce took part in a Pfizer ad campaign reminding people to get their COVID-19 and flu boosters, and he was also in a Bud Light ad. If you recall, that's the beer that a transgender activist featured in a social media campaign, and the fallout got nuts. Other celebrities — we're looking at you, Kid Rock — got so worked up he posted videos of himself blasting 12-packs of Bud Light with a semiautomatic rifle. All season long, Swift's name has been smeared all over a certain segment of social media, where pundits have been insisting there is something more to her appearance in the crowd than watching Kelce play. A now-withdrawn Republican presidential candidate called them an "artificially propped-up couple" who would be coming out with a "major presidential endorsement" just in time. Fox News host Jesse Watters said Swift was a likely "Pentagon psyop" and a "front for a covert political agenda." That prompted the Department of Defense to issue a response. Even they said it tongue firmly in cheek. "As for this conspiracy theory, we are going to shake it off," spokesperson Sabrina Singh said. I don't follow Swift, but I give her so much respect for scaring this many that much just by watching her boyfriend play football. I can't imagine what's going to happen when she rhymes the word "psyop" into a lyric. Contact Chronicle-Telegram columnist Rini Jeffers at rinijeffers@gmail.com.